daily alarms from a person racialised as brown

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Power of a note

A few kind words completely lift the weight in one’s heart. I have been so busy recently that I have not had the chance to reply to Tam’s beautiful – and I do mean beautiful in both form and spirit – letter she sent me all those months ago. And though I have not been able to type a response, your words have given me so much strength and love over the last few weeks. So first and foremost, thank you. Thank you for taking the time to write to me, for opening up a little piece of you to me and for sharing those cute writing sets.

When I was in year 5, my family upped and left the house we were living in and moved into a new area. This was all done suddenly over one summer, no warning and no time to say goodbye to my friends. Still, I stayed in touch with one of best friends over letters. We would write to each other, I would tell her how much I missed her and updating her on stories of my new school, and she would tell me the gossip of the playground. I would write the words out carefully in my bestest handwriting and make sure I was the one to post it myself. Into the red lips it would slip. I would get so excited to get a letter in return, actually holding the words.

Now of course we have countless ways to share words, yet the word do seem less heavy somehow, less powerful. Emojis replacing pleasantries. Chatspeak and acronymns saving us time and love. Letters in the post brings cold and warnings. So the feeling of reclaiming just some of that back, being able to hold words once again, felt powerful.